


the nothing kings

by auxanges



Series: the nothing kings [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Branding, Breathplay, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Come Marking, Helmstroll Kink, Helmstroll Sollux Captor, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 08:05:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18567286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxanges/pseuds/auxanges
Summary: You were forged for each other in whatever hell you’ll manage to agree upon.





	the nothing kings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Shame_Basement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Shame_Basement/gifts).



> (dj khaled voice) another one  
> for bean who requested a continuation of his au! this is effectively a prequel to day-star, so you don't have to have read that one to kinda get the gist. but go ahead if you want to, thats what its there for  
> thank you as always for your patience and wonderful ideas <3

Eridan Ampora’s personnel file is fed to you on a day you can’t remember in a solar system you don’t bother to note. Name, hex, rank, posting, it all flies through your system in a fraction of a second, more innocent than anything he’s ever done. You catch it by its wings and stretch the data out like sugar.

Name, hex, rank, posting.

You accidentally pop a fuse, and the sun-bleached hornless kid that shuffles in to fix you gripes to himself about your outdated suppressors.

Your name was Sollux Captor and things are suddenly interesting again.

* * *

“Does it hurt?”

ED is looking at you over the shoe he’s polishing. You’re cross-legged on your table, three sopor patches deep, feeling like you’re getting spooned by the sun. “No,” you lie.

It doesn’t satisfy him, but he doesn’t look away: the tight circles he’s working into the toe grow distracted. Your favourite brain-teaser is watching each other. Neither of you have figured out if it comes with a solution.

ED says, “With all that techie shit in your back, you might be more expensive than me.”

You laugh, ugly and sudden, and he finally looks back at his shoes.

* * *

To his credit, Eridan doesn’t do anything embarrassing like grovel or faint or spit in your face when he sees you. You’re powering an area four times bigger than your old hivestem pre-shitshow, and you’d prefer not to divert energy towards being embarrassed. You’re equipment, you think every other night. Shit’s beneath you.

This relief is very quickly replaced by another, horribly organic emotion, and you’re reacquainted with the icy injection of fear. What if he’s forgotten you? What if they scrubbed his pan clean at his onboarding, or planted a grub under his stupid hair, or—

Wires at your arms tighten, palemate-stern, and you groan. ED’s inner lids blink.

“I didn’t realize pilots retained vocalization.”

The blueblood crewman eyes you with no small degree of disdain. “They’re not supposed to. This one’s juiced up. Guess we got unlucky.”

Eridan lets out an exhale in place of a laugh. “I guess.”

* * *

 He comes again the second morning. The first, he’d been up overseeing drills and running the infantry range on the lower deck. He’d been out the minute he’d gotten horizontal, stripped to swimwear with a patch stuck to his calf. Your system barely makes out his new collection of caste ink and scar tissue.

ED’s started talking in his sleep.

His freckles glow in the darkness of your bay. You know this from memory and whatever your feeds offer you: you drink up the data like you’re not already dead.

“Hardly surprised you still run your mouth,” he says, after a moment. His voice climbs up your wires, and they curl possessively.

ii have a reputation two maiintaiin. Your own words shudder their way free of the machinery, an unused feature you’ve been clinging to. A little shameful, to start forgetting what you sound like.

Eridan’s fins kick up like you’ve let in a breeze. “You look terrible, man.”

iim not 2urprii2ed, the vacatiion hour2 here take forever two 2tack up. benefiit2 are 2hiity. you know how iit goe2.

“I know,” he agrees, and shuts up for a while.

And then his hands are on you. ED has never tiptoed around bad decisions, preferring to cannonball at them with little care and surprising grace. Every receptor in your system scratches out some mechanical reflex at his touch. You gasp, for the first time in too long; your atrophied lungs can only produce a breathy wheeze.

He does you the decency of grinning. “Yeah. I missed you, too.”

Why bother correcting him?

* * *

 They sedated you for your onboarding, which was smart because you could have shat apocalypse. You got one (admittedly terrible) kick to a crewman’s face and four perigees’ allowance worth of equipment damage in before you got a suppressor clamped on you.

This did not fly. The only flying thing around here is you. They should all be grateful, really—you’re stronger, you’re a fucking powerhouse, you could snap your fingers and fry their cerebella like a god, and the only, the ONLY troll in this shithive starving Empire who UNDERSTOOD that, who treated you like you were something worthy of effort is—he’s—

* * *

 You woke with your body fusing itself to this thick, soothing bundle of artificial nerves. Your mania executed an impressive swandive. You will kind of miss it.

* * *

 On the fifth night ED stomps in spitting acid. You’d been tracking him passively, learning his tells anew: officers are fitted with a tracking chip somewhere between their gills, to keep them from fucking around with them. It meant you could watch his pulse jump-steady, jump-steady during his debriefs and reportings.

hey, champ. want two tell me who pii22ed iin your troll cheerio2 thii2 eveniing or 2hould ii 2ave my2elf the 2u2pen2e and look iit up?

“A little heads up would be swell, next time,” he shoots back, shrugging off his jacket. The glide in “swell” rolls along the walls.

You laugh: all it does is make you twitch and rattle the vents with a tinny, frozen baritone. damn, ii wa2 jokiing about the troll cheeriio2 but kudo2 two that dude and theiir giinormou2 ball2.

Eridan’s dress shirt comes off, too. “Your dock was never updated,” he says, kneeling to rummage in a bag. “You need a rebrand.”

2o?

“So who has sole authority to give it to you, you dense sack of lunch meat?”

His fingers are tight against the tools, and your wires constrict, siphoning any energy you could dedicate to be mad at him.

Or yourself. You’re not picky.

* * *

 Compared to most of your conscription process, the branding was actually pretty non-invasive. Compared to the final shreds of normalcy you refused to forget, it still fucking sucked, but are you in a position to argue?

Trick question. You’re always in a position to argue, but most trolls are not in a position to humour you.

You were stamped with information relayed to you that you had no way of seeing—ship code, helmstag, your sign, the sign of whoever was in charge. You were disoriented, and burning, and couldn’t help but remember the last time you were burning like this, on your kitchen table with some stupid fucker who decided he loved you.

They dunked you in a saltwater pool when it was over, and you watched your wires coil and glow an ugly pink as they worked on your brands, angry that you forgot how to drown.

* * *

 Eridan has to stand on tiptoes and give your wires a tug to convince them it’s safe to lower you. When the brands heal, they’ll need less negotiating, but you take the exercise where you can.

ow, fuck, you say, when blood flow returns to your shoulders.

He looks down sharply. “They said you—”

couldn’t feel paiin?? no 2hiit, they al2o 2aiid ii couldn’t talk or maiintaiin my rogueii2h good look2. 

“One out a three is a failin grade.”

ED quiets, then, as he stamps you. Without your hatch-package of backup singers to distract you from the brand’s unmerciful kiss, you resort to following his eyes, his breathing. He’s gone full sniper—you used to harp on him about it, in the weeks before they picked him up. Still as the outcrops of stone outside his hive.

Which of you is less alive, here?

“How’s that feel?” asks Eridan. Your wires coil, and sigh, and prod at the skin you can’t see.

fiine. 

He snaps his gills. “Fine.”

You register the cold more than the burning; whatever your wires are doing back there is anyone’s guess, but when ED runs a rag of ice water over his stamp you let out the most godawful sound your stupid body can manage.

It is such a fucking shame you still have vital signs right now.

Eridan stops, but does not pull back. “Still fine?” he asks. His voice is a little hoarse: if you had fins, they might kick up a little tornado. As it stands, your lower wires circle up your thighs.

2tiil fiine, ED. Something’s leaking air. There’s a decent chance it’s your dignity.

The rag disappears, but the cold does not.

ED’s fingers trace the numb tissue of your shoulder—up-down-up-down-up-down. Your body tries its shameful best to shiver.

Up-down-up-down-up-down.

He says, “I wonder what else you can feel.”

He’s always had the worst pickup lines. You’ve missed them so much you could hang yourself with the longing.

* * *

 Kneeling has no business being graceful, especially kneeling to suck off a battery. ED sinks to the floor like he owns it (and you suppose he does, if the pulsing stamps on your back are anything to go by), the ghosts of touches over your sides. Maybe he fancies he can make you a matching pair of sea-parts, to add to your trail mix of extra bits.

Speaking of bits.

you good?

Eridan shows you his teeth. Your feeds pick it up from three different angles, each somehow more arousing than the last. “They don’t exactly make these suits user-friendly.”

iill be 2ure two log a complaiint. there, done.

“Fancy man with his own bandwidth,” ED grumbles, and you feel and impatient tug at your waist. There’s a tear, and a little “hah” noise that comes from the troll at the base of your rig.

Evidently, your bulges don’t follow your wires, which has never really been an issue. ED seems to agree; he runs his thumb along the underside of one, letting the other curl over his wrist. It’s almost impossibly tender. You’re tempted to spit in his face, but your mouth has gone dry.

He scoots closer. All your wires tremble, or maybe just react to you. He’s merciful enough not to comment.

When Eridan finally, _finally_ wraps his lips around you it’s all you can do not to shatter the breakers. It’s a shock akin to that one time when you were four and got caught in a rainstorm. It’s a jump-start to your system—your real one, not the artificial bullshit they strapped you into. He flattens his tongue under your bulge and you stutter out a cry, a genuine and ugly sound.

He may as well be raising you from the goddamn dead.

Your other bulge is eager along his jaw, dipping occasionally to try at the gills on either side of his throat. ED makes a sound that, at best, is a half-assed warning, reflexive; it rolls along your shaft and through your bones to your fizzling pan.

Somewhere, there’s a whistle, like the charged air of your upswings. You can’t move above the proverbial belt, but you feel like you could do anything. You have one of the most powerful soldiers in the Fleet on his knees in front of you, for fuck’s sake. You could keep him here forever— _you could keep him safe_ —

Eridan chokes.

 _Fuck_. Your bulge retracts partway, fast enough to ache. His pupils are thin, confused slits; you slog through static to find out why, and shit.

Shit.

One of your wires has dropped from your thigh to curl around his neck, almost laughably intimate. Shame coats you like oil.

fuck, ED, ii—

He tips his head a little, until one of his fins brushes against it. Both appendages twitch, and he lets out a raspy laugh before swallowing you down again.

You almost come on the spot.

ii cannot beliieve how fucked up you are. you’ve 2eriiou2ly been holdiing out on me. 

ED shrugs one shoulder: it encourages the wire to continue, and you register the flutter of his undershirt as his gills kick in. What a masochist.

You were forged for each other in whatever hell you’ll manage to agree upon.

* * *

 The first time you and Eridan pailed, he’d just gotten slapped with his commission bars the night before, and his eyes were fever-bright with the closest thing to fear he would let himself show you. You did your best to fuck your futures into oblivion; he cleared the voices from your pan and replaced them with his own.

When it was over, and you had to remember which way was up in his crooked hive, ED tapped two fingers against your chest. “I’ll find you.”

“What?”

“When they call us up.” He’d propped himself on one elbow to look you over, and the shine of fever was still there in his face. The fear, though, had seeped into his floorboards. “I don’t give a shit how long it takes, how many Fleet boots I gotta lick—”

“Heh.”

“—they’re fuckin thick if they think they have a hold on you, Sol.”

By all accounts, it should have pissed you off, as most of your conversations tended to. But here you could smell the sea through the fogged-up portholes, and the rolling thunderclouds outside hung heavy on your vertebrae. You bit your tongue hard enough to bleed, and let ED lick the remaining doubt out of your mouth.

“Your word against the stars, dude.”

ED had turned to look at you. “Then I’ll have to find a way to prove it, won’t I?”

* * *

With the few remaining shreds of concentration in your admittedly scrambled neuron collection, you coax another wire down. It’s not a standard command, physical, electronic or otherwise, but with some degree of effort you can still give them suggestions. ED’s got your whole system feeling more like itself again.

The second wire caresses his cheek, and you watch his inner lids flutter shut: it makes his stubborn insistence on focusing on you a little more eerie, the haze in his eyes more literal. There is a very, very light brush of fangs along the underside of your bulge. Your body wrenches out another moan, and ED flexes his tongue again and takes you to fucking town.

It’s about now that a thought tumbles down your pan like a landslide. He... _enjoys_ you like this. Beyond the freaky shit coiled around his throat, its twin mapping out one of his fins. Somewhere in the internal twisted machinations of Eridan Ampora, he likes the sight of you strung up. Demoness, he probably got halfway to creaming his ironed officers’ jeans when he burned his sign into whatever little piece of you was left after the ship staffers were through with picking apart your meat suit.

You should be upset. Pissed off, like you used to get. Like he always makes you.

In your previous lives, you’d rain hell down on his stupid horns, and he would take it like you handed him unfiltered wrath on a silver platter. Now?

Now doesn’t have to be so different.

Your next excuse for an exhale crackles with potential; the suppressors whimper in protest; at the place where your feet were, you feel Eridan go very, very still.

His lids open again. You can see, again, the faint glow of freckles across the bridge of his nose, at his neck gills where the wire has loosened a little: the other freed one has settled around his wrist.

You know each other best when neither of you says a thing, sometimes.

Another little push, and the suppressor short-circuits. Sparks flood every empty pocket of air between you, lighting up like glow worms, and Eridan for real moans around you, working his mouth back into his earlier eager pace. You love being right even more than you love irritating him, so it’s pretty goddamn great when one just leads into another like that for you.

You guide your little array of sparks closer to his sea bits, along the trembling sighs at his ribs and down to the strain in his pants. You’re going to need some kind of reboot after this, or an adrenaline drip, or whatever newfangled bullshit they’ll come up with to keep you trucking into the next century. It is going to be more worth it than anything you have ever blustered your way through.

ED is worth—

Your climax barely registers through your system until you lose control of your light show. Your sparks fall around the rig block: when your sensors clear again, Eridan’s hand is down his pants, wire and all. His release is muffled by the churn of feedback you’re struggling to clear. Occupational hazards really need to work on their timing.

When your bulge finally has enough and frees up his mouth, he sits back on his heels to wipe it with the back of his palm. His knuckles come away a heady gold, and he looks at them with little concern.

You try for speech, and then try for frowning when your post-pailing brain cells forget how to make that happen. who look2 terriible now?

ED flips you off. “I don’t,” he starts, then clears his throat: it’s almost ridiculous how good hoarse sounds on him. Seadwellers really do get all the luck. “I don’t think that qualifies as a complaint.”

diidn’t 2ay ii wa2 complaiiniing, 2aiilor. nothiing better than the bar beiing lowered wiith miiniimum iinput from me. 

He pushes to his feet, swinging his dress shirt over his shoulder. Even Eridan’s tongue is painted. “You know, for a guy with horridly neglected vocal cords, you have such a way with words.”

iit2 actually why they hiired me. thii2 whole riig bu2iine22 ii2 my 2iide hu2tle. 

You’re still chipping away at quieting the suppressors; it’s like wrangling a teething purrbeast. It means you don’t see him reach into his pants until he pulls his hand free again, grimacing at the sticky mess of violet.

wow, rematch already? leak your traiiniing regiimen, 2ome of the2e lo2ers could u2e the 2tamiina boost. 

Eridan snorts and reaches up to find your stamped expanse of skin again, his fingers as cold as a second chance, and your shivers make a curtain call. “Gimme a raincheck. Sailor.”

Up-down-up-down-up-down.

Up-down-up-down-up-down.


End file.
